Watchful I: 28mm Ancient Chinese Kickstarter

Welcome to our company’s first Kickstarter and thank you for taking the time to look at our products. Hopefully after reviewing our Kickstarter you find it interesting enough to contribute to the success of our miniatures range. We have been working for almost a year preparing for this Kickstarter and launching our company into the marketplace.

Purpose:

This is the first army of a planned range that represents the civilizations and their mythical creatures on Asian Continent during the late B.C. / early A.D. time period. Our goal is to hopefully release this army followed by several new armies that will support a rules system that we are currently writing.

In the meantime, our Warring States / Qin Dynasty army range is capable of being used for your favorite rules systems and can be combined with other miniature ranges. Our miniatures are true 28mm and match up well with against the popular miniature ranges in the industry.

Future Rules Design:

While every army that we are considering for future release might have different organizations we are using the ‘Rule of 5’ for the Chinese Warring States and Qin Dynasty forces. This concept basically means that the smallest unit type we will be focusing on for the Chinese is 5 and then multiples of 5 troops as armies increase in size.

We plan on designing historical armies allowing players to build accurate looking forces in their historical tabletop settings. We are also expanding the army range by introducing a fantasy element to the force giving players the option to bring in the mythical creatures of that civilization. This game design concept will give players the option to incorporate fantasy into their games or not without the need to change rules systems.

Goal:

The goal of this Kickstarter is to raise enough funds to release a core range of product enabling players to build a respectful Chinese army. The miniatures will be produced in metal with the expanded goal of converting some of the metal miniatures into plastic.

Element Packs:

We wanted to make the pledging process easy to understand and even easier when it comes to selecting your product. We didn’t want to restrict how you build your own army so we have created Element Packs allowing you to determine the contents of your force regardless of the pledge level you purchase. One Element Pack has a $40 USD value and we have provided enough troops in each Element Pack to make all of them a very fair value.

The initial Element Packs being offered allow you to select from our infantry, cavalry, chariots, Fu Dogs, and Terracotta Warriors with the infantry and cavalry offering unit options from which you can pick. We have provided digital pictures of our miniatures and show you the contents of each unit you can purchase. You will notice that the term sprue is used with a number corresponding to the amount of sprues you will receive in that unit Element Pack. For each sprue you will receive one item and if you are supposed to get x2 sprues then you would receive two of each item on the sprue.

For example, a person buying two Element Packs will select from the above troop types and then if needed, make a further selection deciding which unit type they would like. For their first choice they would like an infantry pack consisting of heavy melee infantry so they would select the Wood Element Pack and then choose the Oak Unit. For their second selection they decided to pick a Water Element Pack (cavalry) and selected the heavy cavalry unit.

You do not have to select which Element Packs you want until the Kickstarter has ended and we send you the Survey. We decided to create this flexibility because as new units are unlocked by Stretch Goals you will have the ability to select from those Element Packs as well.

Pledge Levels & Add-ons:

You will find several pledges listed below that may be purchased more than once but some of them have a limited quantity. Particular pledges offer free items such as Kickstarter Heroes or promotional opportunities such as hitting a particular number of Facebook Likes or Kickstarter Backers. Please read each pledge carefully in order to select the best choice for you.

You may also include additional funds to purchase the Add-ons listed below as well as any Stretch Goals that are unlocked. Some Stretch Goal items will be offered as an Add-on rather than as an Element Pack because the cost of the item will be cheaper or more expensive than the $40 USD Element Pack cost. These items will often be heroes or larger monsters and it would be unfair to you to group the lower costing items together and unfair to us to lower the price on a more expensive item to produce.

Shipping:

We have given the shipping costs a lot of thought and we completely understand that shipping costs can often decide whether or not someone invests in a project. We would really love to pay for all the shipping costs and allow you to enjoy the miniatures but realistically as a start-up business the shipping expenses could create a significant strain on our budget jeopardizing future projects.

So we hopefully created a shipping program that is relatively fair and allows us to continue to bring out great products in the future. We have set the standard shipping costs for all pledge levels at $7 USD for shipping within the United States and $14 USD for shipping outside the United States. If the shipping costs more we as a company will pay for the difference showing you how important it is that we work with you to help get you the product that you want.

We hope you enjoy our Kickstarter and if you have any questions do not hesitate to contact us.

Thanks

Watchful I Studio Team

Size Comparison

To better understand the scale of our miniatures compared to other manufacturers I took a picture of a handful of miniatures from my own collection to show you Watchful i Studio’s 28mm compared to other major companies.

Pledge-Level

Below you will find the metal castings of the Infantry Wood Element Packs that are listed above. I thought showing you our progress in the update section as well as on this page will give you a better indication on our casting quality. The 3D digital sculpts have translated very well to metal as you can see below.

Here is an example of a painted skirmishing archer. The sculpting shows up well during the painting process with the folds in the clothing and detail in the face easy to paint.

This is a painted example of the Light Infantry. I wanted to show different colors on the clothing to give you a better idea on how the miniatures take a variety of color.

Here is a painted sample of the Heavy Infantry. The details are quite extensive with the ribbon tying the armor plates together and you could even paint the nails that are all over the armor and helmet. I choose to keep them black as if the nails we just painted over when the armor was colored.

If we hit our goal and unlock the plastic sets you have the option to exchange the Element Packs that would be produced in metal into plastic. The first plastic set we would like to produce is for the infantry so if you plan on purchasing any infantry and we hit $85,000 you can select the Metal Element Pack for plastic infantry instead of the Wood Element Pack. The same would go for cavalry and the chariots if we unlock them at $125,000 and $165,000 respectfully.

Here is the metal casting of the General on foot and all of the pieces you will receive. The translation for 3D digital sculpt to metal was perfect and the castings are first rate.

KICKSTARTER HEROES

The Kickstarter Heroes are free miniatures that we are offering to those of you who purchase a pledge level of $80 USD or higher. We already have the Swordmaster and Drunken Master cast in metal. Whether you receive one or two Kickstarter Heroes you may select from the following:

Seeing the metal is great but looking at a fully painted version is cooler. 🙂